Blacks are disciplined at far higher rates than other students

By REBEKAH DENN, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 9:00 pm, Thursday, March 14, 2002

Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Dian Fundisha-Bey is a teacher and the site coordinator at the Seattle Public School's Interagency Academy's Southwest location. Interagency is an alternative high school at some 20 locations for students that have had difficulty in other schools. The school offers very small class sizes and individualized attention. less

Dian Fundisha-Bey is a teacher and the site coordinator at the Seattle Public School's Interagency Academy's Southwest location. Interagency is an alternative high school at some 20 locations for students that ... more

Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Blacks are disciplined at far higher rates than other students

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Seattle Public Schools are confronting a puzzling and unpleasant truth: African American students are disciplined at far higher rates than students of other races.

Overall, black students in secondary schools are 2.6 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than students of other races. And this disparity has plagued the Seattle system for more than 20 years.

People close to the problem – teachers, administrators and parents – think they can explain the puzzle. When asked, most of them say the discipline gap has more to do with students’ troubled home lives than with the color of students’ skin.

But a two-month examination and statistical analysis by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has revealed that most of the easy answers and widely held assumptions are inadequate.

In many cases, the assumptions make intuitive sense, and in many cases they do have some effect on the discipline gap. But they are not as influential as people think.

For example:

Latest videos

AN ASSUMPTION:

Non-traditional homes are the problem.

Travis Blue is a white man who teams up with an African American man to teach a re-entry program for expelled students at John Marshall High School. Every day in his classroom, he looks into the faces that represent the discipline numbers.

Related Stories

"A lot of my kids are from foster families. One of my kids ran away a couple weeks ago. Kids don't know if they're going to be living with a grandmother or aunt tonight," Blue said. Such issues, he thinks, are clearly linked to the discipline problems among his students.

THE STATISTICAL REALITY: It's an attractive explanation, and it might be true for some of Blue's students. But non-traditional homes alone explain only part of the discipline gap.

A statistical analyst hired by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer studied nearly 40,000 secondary school discipline records from the Seattle Public Schools and found that students who don't live with both parents were 2.3 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than students who live in more traditional homes. And nearly 70 percent of African American students in the Seattle district do not live in two-parent homes.

But the analyst also factored out the effects of those non-traditional homes. Home lives aside, the analysis found, black students were still more than twice as likely as students of other colors to be suspended or expelled.

Although suspensions can help teachers keep order in class, they also can send students spiraling downward academically. Students lose valuable classroom time with no guarantee that they'll be supervised by adults rather than hanging out on the street.

In the 2000-01 school year, 77 students in the Seattle district were suspended or expelled five or more times, missing days and even months of class each time. Forty-six of them -- 60 percent -- were African American.

African American students are statistically less likely to succeed academically than students of other races in Seattle, more likely to drop out and more likely to be imprisoned both as teens and as adults. Experts believe those troubles work in a vicious circle, with each risk factor raising the odds of the other.

"It's all of our problem. It's a national problem. If we don't educate these kids, they're going to be breaking into my house, your house, everybody's house," said Betty Gray, an assistant principal at West Seattle High School and head of the Seattle Alliance of Black Student Educators.

Although 23 percent of the district's secondary students in the 1999-2000 school year were black, they accounted for 44 percent of suspensions and expulsions in the district. No other ethnic group showed such a dramatic gap.

The numbers were similar in the 2000-01 school year, and district demographers say the numbers are not significantly different from what they've seen in other years. Nor is Seattle alone: The district's numbers are similar to those in other urban schools around the nation.

In Seattle, the school district has made a public issue of its racial disparities and pledged last year to eliminate the gap in discipline as well as academics by 2005. It is one of the few districts nationally to confront the problem so openly or to set such an ambitious goal.

But educators and community members have heard similar promises before, and many cannot avoid cynicism.

Despite the district's high-level instructions, the gap in discipline is not always recognized as an issue at individual schools. Many administrators have difficulty giving it a high priority when academics are placing overwhelming demands on staff time.

If schools are ever going to correct the discipline gap, educators and experts say, they will need new approaches that deal with the racial issues.

"When you start talking about data that's racially skewed or race in schools at all, teachers tend to go to the side of, 'Oh, I'm being accused of being racist. I'm not racist!'" said Heidi Hess, a former San Francisco teacher who helped lead an effort to tackle her school's disproportionate discipline rates.

"And so you sort of get stuck there."

THE RACE FACTOR: Students are singled out for acting 'black'

Dealing with the explosive issue of race, many educators pride themselves on being colorblind. But ignoring color may be part of the problem.

Many African American students bring particular styles of learning, speaking and behaving with them from home -- and schools are quick to punish those styles.

Researchers of all races acknowledge that classic classroom rules, established by a predominately white system, reward sitting still, staying quiet and working independently.

This compliance comes more naturally for some students than others. Boys, who are generally more aggressive and rambunctious, are disciplined at much higher rates than girls. Likewise, African American students of both sexes are disciplined more often than other students.

"There is a big difference in culture between African American kids and white kids, and it is not just the class system. It's a matter of fact that these kids are being raised differently," said Randy Riley, a student intervention specialist at Bailey Gatzert Elementary, who is African American.

Behaviors can't be generalized for all African American students, just as stereotypes can not be applied universally to students of other races. For example, not all Asian American students are quietly obedient, and not all Native American students consider it disrespectful to look into a teacher's eyes.

But educators, community members and scholars said they generally observe African American students as having louder, more direct speaking styles and more physical learning styles, such as preferring hands-on projects rather than sitting through lectures.

African American students often speak to adults more as equals than as authority figures, because that's the way many speak with their families, said Skip Rowland, a member of the district's task force on racial disparities, who is African American. "In school, that can get you sent to the office if a teacher is not aware of that culture in that light."

And African American students are frequently more out-front with their emotions, said Aki Kurose Middle School Principal Bi Hoa Caldwell, who is Japanese and Chinese: "They'll let you know what they're thinking, even if it's not real nice. In a way, it's more honest."

Teachers who see that as disrespect, or are uncertain how to approach the students, have less luck keeping discipline, Caldwell said.

Thus, students may be disciplined for how they speak as much as for what they say.

Echoing several other educators, Ellis said he modulates his own voice depending on the company he's keeping, but finds not all students automatically know to do the same. And although he doesn't object to loud voices in his classroom unless they're disrupting others, he believes African American students are singled out for speaking loudly elsewhere around the school.

Some staff and students also say "play-fighting" leads to many disciplinary actions. And a number of school officials said these mock battles are more prevalent among African American boys and too often are misread as being real.

One fall afternoon at Garfield High, security officer Michael Dixon's walkie-talkie crackled with the report of several African American boys fighting. Dixon, an African American, responded, but returned to his office within minutes.

"It was horseplay," he said, a bunch of boys scuffling and "rassling" for fun. He did not send them to the office for discipline, but made them report for lunchroom duty. And he told them even horseplay was not OK on school grounds.

"If you don't know anything about the culture -- which most people don't," he said, you might have given another group of African American boys needless suspensions.

In 2000-01, 22 percent of the suspensions or expulsions given to African American students were for fighting, compared with 16 percent for white students.

Allowing for cultural differences doesn't mean allowing disruptive or unacceptable behavior in the classroom, said Dwayne Martinson, a white teacher who is serving a principal internship at Hamilton Middle School. But it does mean understanding that not everyone will intuitively grasp the rules, and not everyone will react to a teacher's demands in the same way.

If cultural differences are a large part of the discipline gap, it would suggest that African American teachers would share some of their black students' culture and discipline them at a more proportionate rate than do other teachers. But that can't be determined; the Seattle district, where 11 percent of certificated staff members are African American, does not track which employees report students of which races for discipline problems, and even a few teachers at a single school could easily skew the overall numbers.

Even African American educators aren't necessarily immune from having low expectations for students of color.

The Rev. Leslie Braxton, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle, remembered that when he was growing up in the Tacoma Public Schools, an African American principal always asked Braxton's white friend how he was doing in class. But when the principal turned to Braxton, he would ask whether Braxton was ready for upcoming athletic events.

"I catered to what people tended to show me was valuable about me," explained Braxton, who said he later found better role models in college.

Some students say they see unequal treatment too often for it to be coincidence -- and they think teachers expect bad behavior from them because of the color of their skin or the way they dress.

Veronica Woods, a student at Interagency Academy, an alternative school that works with community service agencies, discovered a general rule during her time in more mainstream schools: Black students get in trouble for acting out; white students get excuses.

She remembers getting suspended for a fight with another African American student at McClure Middle School a few weeks after a white and a Filipino student had gone unpunished for a similar fight. Woods said she and the girl she had fought were struck by the unfairness of it all, and they became friends.

Woods said she could spot the pattern even on the first day of school, when the meeker-acting students -- usually white and Asian girls -- walked into class giggling but drew no negative attention from the teacher.

Then, she said, her voice growing stronger, "In comes sister-girl and her home-girls." The teacher's eye alights on them in a way that says, "These are the ones I'm going to have to watch."

It's just like society outside school, Veronica said. She recalled the time she got a job in a clothing store and was told to watch out for minority students because they were more likely to shoplift, and she remembers the way adults clutch their bags when students of color walk past.

It isn't that people are claiming that racial inequality is the only reason behind the discipline gap. But sometimes the presence of that inequality seems clear.

Michelle Jacobsen, a special education teacher of severely disabled students at Rainier Beach High School, remembered seeing a clear split as a white parent volunteering in North End schools in the late 1980s. "You would see a whole bunch of kids doing the same thing," she said. "Invariably, black kids would be singled out."

Kathryn Hutchinson, a principal intern at Nathan Hale High, is sometimes skeptical about some details she hears from African American students who claim they've been treated unfairly. But then, Hutchinson recalls a student she taught at Franklin High School who scoffed at her offer of a restroom hall pass.

The student told her, "I don't need no pass, I'm white!" And he walked successfully to the restroom and back without being challenged, passing two African American students along the way who had been pulled aside.

On his return, the student boasted to Hutchinson, who is African American, "What did I tell you?"

AN ASSUMPTION:

The problem is poverty.

The last thing Cleveland High School teacher David Fisher wants to do is write a disciplinary "referral" -- sending a student to the office with a slip of paper that might lead to suspension or expulsion.

A dedicated teacher, Fisher runs tutoring sessions on his own time to help math students make up missed work. He calls parents at home to warn them when their children aren't doing well and to urge them to help.

There are times, however, when he feels he has no choice.

One fall day, for example, Fisher led his remedial class in a lesson to build geometric shapes with drinking straws, the sort of hands-on, collaborative lesson that's supposed to engage students.

A young woman -- who like most of the class was African American -- slouched in 10 minutes late, cursing loudly when she tripped over a chair. As Fisher spoke to the class, she steadily droned, "I don't understand, I don't understand," over his voice.

He approached to offer help, but she ignored his directions. When he took her outside to talk, she yelled that it was his fault that she couldn't do the work. The lesson ended with the girl heading for the office.

Poverty, not race, is at the heart of such problems and the discipline gap, Fisher said.

"We're dealing with economics" -- with all its accompanying social problems, he said. Students have an "underlying anger" that accompanies financial woes, he added. On a practical level, some of their parents may never have had the time or ability to teach them how to behave or to help with their homework.

THE STATISTICAL REALITY: Poverty undoubtedly plays some role in the discipline gap. But it doesn't come close to explaining it all, the analysis showed.

It's true that students who qualify for subsidized lunches, a standard measure of poverty, are 2.4 times more likely to be suspended or expelled as students whose families are financially better off. But after adjusting discipline records for the effects of poverty, black students were still 2.1 times more likely to be suspended or expelled as other students.

Many African American parents, the P-I found, regardless of their income or social status, fundamentally believe that their children will not be viewed the same way or given the same opportunities as other students in Seattle schools.

Zakiya Stewart is an education professor who runs the African-American Parents Helpline, a volunteer service to help black families whose children have difficulties in school. She remembers asking one mother what she wanted to do about her daughter's problems.

"I just want them to treat my child fair," the woman said.

You can't have that, Stewart informed her.

They settled instead on the goal of helping her daughter read at her grade-level by the end of the year. That, at least, was something they could change.

Almost everyone agrees that students who are suspended or expelled usually have genuinely done something wrong. But the definition of "wrong" is rarely as clear-cut as bringing a gun to school or selling drugs.

And African American students are most commonly cited for the fuzziest discipline categories, raising concerns about the subjectivity of their punishments.

For example, 52 percent of all suspensions and expulsions for "disobedience" or "disruptive conduct" last year went to African-American students. Just 23 percent of suspensions or expulsions in those categories went to white students.

Well over half -- 58 percent -- of suspensions or expulsions for "intimidation of authority" or "interference with authority" went to African American students; 15 percent went to white students.

The open-ended nature of some of the discipline categories "is so unfair," said West Seattle High School librarian Deborah Arthur, who advocates a more standardized approach. "What is 'disruptive'? It's anything that irritates me.

"It's like we're setting some of our kids up."

School officials are aware of the issue. The school district's attorney and two top administrators sent a memo in September that noted the racial differences among students referred for "disobedience" and asked staff members to better document reasons for disobedience referrals -- or to use other, more specific categories when appropriate.

Anecdotally, such stories spread beyond Seattle and across the country.

Nationwide, "you will find minority students are referred for very subjective behaviors, such as insubordination, such as disruptive behavior," said John Jackson, national director of education for the NAACP.

He said an examination of discipline complaints often show that "insubordination for an African American student and insubordination for a white student is different. (For a black student) it's: 'She smacked her lips after I told her to do this,' or, 'She rolled her eyes or rolled her neck.'"

Scientific evidence is harder to come by, but one study completed last year has become a leading document on the discipline gap. Indiana University researcher Russell Skiba found that African American students were more likely than others in an urban Indiana school district to be disciplined, but found no evidence that they actually misbehaved more.

Unlike Seattle, Indiana provided written accounts of each case that included information about race.

Skiba found that African American students were more likely to be sent to the office for discipline than other students who had committed similar transgressions. He concluded there may have been "pervasive and systemic" bias against African American students, a theory that's gained some local and national acceptance.

But the idea that race has any connection to discipline seems hard for some schools to explore.

That's what Suzanne Mana'o found last year when her son was handed a bite of a Snickers bar by a classmate at Washington Middle School in Seattle.

"His teacher asked him to get rid of it; I guess she meant spit it out or something. He chewed and swallowed. She felt it was chewing slowly and swallowing in some kind of a defiant mode," Mana'o said.

"He's pretty squirrelly, he has a lot of energy, but defiant is something -- I couldn't really put him in that category."

The boy, who is half African American, served in-school suspension for four days -- two for the chocolate bar, with two more added for talking out of turn. Concerned, Mana'o visited the in-school suspension room each day. She noticed that the students in the room were always students of color.

She made an appointment with the principal. She wanted to ask about race.

"When I asked that question, the principal said, 'We don't look at children that way.'"

The answer surprised her. "I said, clearly you do, unless you're prepared to tell me brown children just misbehave more than white children," she said.

"I don't know how you're going to fix a problem if you're not willing to say you have it."

THE RACE FACTOR: African American students more likely to be disruptive

Some principals say the system will do students a disservice if "political correctness" compels schools to ignore serious misbehavior in order to improve their disciplinary numbers.

"If they get in the face of a teacher and say, 'You f*in' bitch, I'm not going to do that,' what are we supposed to do?" asked Karma Torklep, principal of Denny Middle School.

Perhaps because of academic frustrations, perhaps for other reasons, educators believe some African American students -- like some students of all races -- simply act in ways that aren't appropriate for school.

Arguing and fighting, for example, are traits sociologists see more frequently with students living in poverty. But they've also come to be associated with being black -- by some students and teachers alike, even by students who are well-off.

In the first week of school last year, for example, Kurose principal Caldwell heard a middle-class African American student screaming obscenities.

Caldwell told her, "Excuse me, you don't talk like that around here."

During the next period, she heard the obscenities again. When Caldwell took the girl to the office to telephone her mother, the girl predicted that her mother would cuss the principal out, too. Caldwell got on the phone.

"(The mother) said, 'Now, just one thing. You heard all this with your own ears?'" Caldwell assured her she had, and the mother asked to speak to her daughter.

"She held the phone six inches from her ear. The mother chewed her out; it was all 'Uncle so-and-so,' and 'Reverend so-and-so,' and 'you weren't raised on the streets.' The kid, of course, was in tears -- 'Yes mama, no mama. Ms. Caldwell it won't happen ever again.'

"I think kids like that, the middle-class black kids who are in a predominately black school, are wanting to fit in and not wanting to appear white. I think that's what it was for her, wanting to show off for her friends. ... It's a real bind."

Caldwell saw the same situation in academics another day, listening to three African American students after an honors math test. One boy had received a 97, the highest score in the class; the other two had scored in the 80s.

"They were ragging on him about how, 'You just think you're better than we are. What do you think you're trying to do, act white?' They were doing it good-naturedly, but there was obviously a twist."

She called them into her office and said, "I can't believe I heard what I heard."

AN ASSUMPTION:

Placing black students in special education classes is the problem.

Marcel Robinson, now a successful student at Interagency Academy, was class clown during his middle school years in Everett and Seattle. He didn't do the class work, he said, because he didn't know how. His mom didn't know how to help him.

"Kids clown because they're not learning anything, or they don't understand," said Robinson, who is African American.

His clowning didn't get him extra academic help, however. Instead, his mother received a letter suggesting that his behavior problems meant he should be placed in special education classes.

Students are often referred to special education because of behavior problems. And one out of every three children classified as a special education student in the Seattle Public Schools is African American.

It would make sense that special education students would be more likely to face school discipline. In fact, they are 2.5 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students, the P-I analysis found.

THE STATISTICAL REALITY: The overrepresentation of African American students in special ed still doesn't explain the discipline gap. After accounting for the effects of special education, the P-I analysis found, African American students were still 2.3 times more likely than other students to be suspended or expelled.

Behavior problems that lead to discipline, teachers say, are usually linked to academic problems. And African American students, on average, lag behind their white counterparts from elementary school onward in test scores and grades. They also are underrepresented in gifted classes and more likely to drop out.

Two out of five African American students met the fourth-grade standard for reading on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) last year, compared with four out of five white students.

Often, teachers said, students who can't do their work get bored or frustrated in class -- and act out.

"The way to get attention, they've learned, is by negative behavior," said Liz Hepner, a white teacher at Garfield High, which has a mix of neighborhood Central District students and students from the districtwide gifted program.

Only 3 percent of Garfield's African American students are in the school's honors classes, compared with 31 percent of the school's white students, according to figures the district provided to the Office of Civil Rights for the 1999-2000 school year.

Hepner said her white students who don't do the work are generally being lazy. But her African American students who don't do the work usually lack the skills that they should have learned in earlier grades.

"We can't fix high school if we can't fix elementary school," said Denise Fields, a parent at Franklin High.

Another Franklin High parent, Linda Thompson-Black, is co-leader of a group of African American parents trying to improve student performance. She believes that if parents were more involved in their children's school lives, and if students had more academic help, most of the discipline problems would improve.

"It's really important for young people to begin to see African American students themselves as achievers," Thompson-Black said. "We're competing with those videos and everything, and the message about achievement isn't as cool as other messages are."

A lot of teachers say she's right on target.

Students "want to come to school sagging (their pants), singing dirty rap songs" like the stars they see on TV, said Riley, the intervention specialist at Gatzert. "It's our job, even though it shouldn't be, to tell them what's appropriate and show them what's appropriate."

Cleveland High freshmen Rachelle McRae, who is African American, and friend Courteney Charlie, a Native American, are diligent students who generally believe people get disciplined based on actions, not because of race.

But the two students say they do see teachers inviting situations to escalate, by chastising students for minor bad behavior in front of the entire class.

The more "ghetto" you look, they said, the more likely that a teacher will challenge you in that way. And if you're called out like that, McRae said, explicating an unwritten rule of teenage life, "you have nothing to do but talk back to the teacher."

Most often, administrators and teachers said, the offenses that get students disciplined have nothing to do with their original classroom problem. It's a minor problem that escalates into a showdown.

Gail Thomas, a Franklin High school parent, feels some teachers assume African American students will not behave appropriately, and create an environment where those students feel it's OK not to behave. Students faced with that attitude, she said, decide that, "Because you're not respecting me, I don't have to respect you."

She tells her own daughter not to react badly even if a teacher is acting badly. She says "that teacher may not have been respectful, but that doesn't mean you go down to his or her level." Thomas instructs her daughter to deal with her problems maturely -- and if that doesn't work, bring the problems home for her parents to take to a higher level.

Caldwell, in turn, tells teachers to keep their cool and not to go down to the level of disrespectful students.

She recalled one teacher who wondered how she could show respect for her students if the students weren't showing respect for her. "We're the adults in this thing," Caldwell replied.

And some reactions by African American students, educators said, can lead to more such showdowns.

"Black students culturally are very loud, they're verbal," said Cleveland teacher Fisher, who is white. "It's not bad, but it is disruptive. So you ask them to pipe down, tone it down, and it escalates up. Then when you ask again, you're picking on them. Then they confront you. Then it gets to the point where you can't teach your class, where they're so confrontational (you) have to ask them to go out."

The way in which teachers approach misbehaving students can also be different -- and have different results -- for students of color.

African American students are more likely than others to react badly and try to save face when they're openly challenged, several teachers and administrators said.

"Some kids don't want to be cornered," said Cathy Thomas, an African American assistant principal at Franklin High who has worked at other Seattle schools. "No kid likes it, but especially African American kids."

Simply being disciplined by a white authority figure can carry "a lot of baggage" with students of color, said Michael Starsky, a principal intern at Mercer Middle School who is white. Administrators need to be sensitive to that perception to avoid escalating problems, he said, whether or not they like it or agree with it.

THE RACE FACTOR: The challenge to be 'bicultural' falls more heavily on black students than white teachers

Eckstein Middle School is an academic superstar and has one of the best overall discipline rates in the Seattle district: Only 6 percent of its students were suspended or expelled in the 1999-2000 school year, compared with some schools where a full third of the student body faced such punishments.

Eckstein's numbers seem bleaker, however, when it comes to the discipline gap. The rate of suspension or expulsion was 1-in-4 for the school's black students that year, but was only 1-in-25 for all other students.

Principal Lynn Caldwell, who is African American, was concerned enough to carefully hand-calculate Eckstein's numbers last year. His school's ratios, he concluded, were "skewed" because very few non-black students had been suspended or expelled.

Although Caldwell chose to emphasize the total numbers of disciplined students, his calculations didn't explain why there was such a big gap between the races.

Even at a school such as Eckstein, where disciplinary problems seem much less than the rest of the district, the gap persists.

AN ASSUMPTION:

Immigrants are the problem.

Emma Hong, an Eckstein teacher respected for her progressive discipline policies, lays out clear rules for students who get in trouble, requiring them to write action plans describing what they did wrong and how they'll change. It works well, and she rarely sees any students of any color get suspended or expelled.

So she was surprised and puzzled last year to find out that her school had a severe discipline gap between races.

She could offer only one theory: During the 1999-2000 school year, Eckstein had an unusually difficult group of English as a Second Language students, just as sometimes schools have a particularly troublesome first-grade class or an unruly lunch period. The ESL class included students from Africa, who are formally classified as African Americans, including refugee students who had gone through childhood traumas and seen tragedies firsthand.

"That was the toughest year I can remember," Hong said.

THE STATISTICAL REALITY: There was still a significant discipline gap at Eckstein the 2000-2001 school year,the P-I analysis found. And districtwide, ESL students actually are slightly less likely than other students to be suspended or expelled, and African American students were still 2.6 times more likely than other students to be suspended or expelled after factoring out the effects of ESL.

Questions about disparity in discipline have persisted as long as the Seattle Public Schools have been desegregated.

African American families have continued to encounter statistical and anecdotal evidence that schools are less nurturing, less fair places for their children.

"When you have a perception that the system will not take care of you, you have a responsibility to take care of yourself," said Marcia Knudsen, a district administrator.

In scattered places, individuals and schools are attempting to solve the clashes that exist between African American students and the school system.

Most focus on changing the behavior of students, rather than the behavior of adults.

Hutchinson, the Hale administrator, remembers her family placing formal emphasis on "teaching us to become essentially bicultural," with one way of behaving at home and another way at school.

"We learned to 'code-switch,'" she said. There were lessons that taught even little cues, such as saying, "I be, you be" in some circumstances and, "I am, you are" in others.

It's the sort of education that fewer African American parents give their children today, she said, perhaps because the social apartheid is not as formal or, in most circumstances, as threatening. There are far fewer situations today, she noted, where African Americans would face physical harm for acting in ways that didn't meet approval from white society.

Hutchinson tries to work with Hale students to help them see how their behavior is being seen by others and how to modify it if they wish to. But there has been less emphasis on white adults mastering the same kind of bicultural understanding.

"There's a basic assumption that says anyone who comes into the system has to adjust to it, rather than saying we have to go to where the kids are," said Doug Selwyn, a professor of education at Antioch University and a former Seattle Public Schools teacher.

Braxton, the Mount Zion pastor, sees the same. "Black folks have to understand white folks to survive in America. But by and large we can be ignored, so when anything is questionable, get rid of it, suspend it, lock it up."

Meanwhile, parents of African American students still keep a hawk's eye out for their children. Teresa Vallejo, for example, got a call from a vice principal at Garfield High School last year saying her son would be suspended for five days.

When she asked why, she was told a teacher saw him harassing a girl at lunch.

"I said, my son is not an angel, I know that. No kid is. And if he has done this I want him punished. But this does not sound like my son."

When Vallejo reached her son, who is African American, she heard the story.

He had been talking to his best friend's girlfriend, he said, who was distraught. He put an arm around her to console her.

"I said, you find that girl and you go down to the office, because you will be suspended for a whole week for this.

"Half an hour later, I got a call from the vice principal saying, 'I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have went on hearsay.'"

AN ASSUMPTION:

The combination of social and economic woes is the problem.

When her two teenage sons had problems in the Seattle Public Schools, Bryna Desper tired of hearing the same response from school officials.

"My perception was, they were constantly looking for some pathology in my home, and not, 'How can we get together to make this work for your child?'" said Desper, who works with adoptions at Medina Children's Services. "(The boys were) in some ways already written off -- and no, they didn't really want to deal with me, either."

Both boys are now in schools that Desper thinks are serving them well -- Franklin High and Washington Middle -- but in past grades, Desper had to battle assumptions about what should be expected from her children as African Americans. There was the teacher who suggested her older son, who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, should just get a General Educational Development diploma rather than complete high school; or the teachers who took months to inform her that her younger son had been repeatedly truant.

Too often, she said, it seemed easier for educators to assume that African American boys have home lives that cause problems in school.

THE STATISTICAL REALITY: It's difficult to precisely factor out the combined effects of these socioeconomic factors, because they are likely to be related to each other in a complicated manner. But the analysis found that, after accounting for the combined effects of poverty, broken homes, special education, being male, and being an ESL student, African American secondary students were still almost two times more likely than students of other races to be suspended or expelled from Seattle Public Schools.

With the exception of ESL students, each socioeconomic factor the P-I examined did have some effect on suspension and expulsion rates. All of them combined, however, still did not account for the discipline gap.

There could be other socioeconomic variables at play that the Seattle district does not track or the P-I was unable to determine or did not measure. It could be that the factors the district tracks are inadequate measures.